How to Make It As an Indie Cartoonist “Diligent and hard-working, beloved by editors as a consummate pro, Wright carved out a patchwork career for himself as a cartoonist in Canada, but he had long dreamed of making it big in America, where top syndicated cartoonists were wealthy celebrities. This was not an idle fantasy but a simple financial reality: the most successful Canadian-born cartoonists of that era were those who had left for the United States, be they Palmer Cox (creator of marketing phenomenon The Brownies), Richard Taylor (a fixture in The New Yorker) or Hal Foster (celebrated chronicler of Prince Valiant). If Wright could follow their paths, he wouldn’t have to keep juggling assignments and could focus his talents on one strip.” Jeet Heer – The Walrus – December 2019
Living Well Amid Waste: Wealth, Wages, and Food Insecurity “‘We’ve had to use the food bank a few times, but it’s been a while. We try not to, we don’t as much with the 50% racks now at work,’ Youden explains. She has two teenagers and a nine year old at home. She says that’s where ‘Flashfood,’ a new app that lets grocery stores post their discounted food online, comes in for her. ‘It’s not gone bad, but it’s close to code—close to the expiry date. It’s the only way I can provide healthy food for myself and my family.'” Heidi Janes – The Independent – December 2019
The Year in Video Gaming “I am fantastical—and I don’t mean to enrich myself with the positive connotations of such an adjective in naming myself as such, but rather I mean to say that I am one who conjures fantasies, a mesmer of a man, illusionist. My counsellor told me this during one of my sessions this summer, that in order to heal from the mental processes I was undertaking I must learn to ‘tame my illusions.’ To say I survived the year of all my years would be an understatement: 2019 was a ruination for me in all semblances of the noun.” Joshua Whitehead – Hazlitt – December 2019
A mine in the middle “We fly out of the Liard River in a float plane operated by a man named Doug. The plane glides up over the boreal forest and bogs of the seemingly endless Liard Plains, until the landscape swoops skyward like a calligraphic flourish at the end of a long, unbroken sentence. The flourish is the MacKenzie mountain range, forming part of the boundary between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The mountain ridges are wide, wider than freeways, and I gape at the contours of the rocky slopes. Rivers below us meander like loosely coiled ropes, their origins drooling rivulets rolling down the slopes of now snowless mountains. And then we see it. The Nahanni.” Sharon J. Riley – The Narwhal – December 2019
Bringing Old Crow To The World “When Dana Tizya-Tramm was 12 he went to an Easter dinner at an aunt’s place in Tagish, an hour south of his home in Whitehorse. She had prepared a feast. There was turkey and stuffing, there were mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, candied yams, buttered carrots. There was quail, and rice, and pasta salad. For dessert: multiple pies. His aunt was not in the room as the young Tizya-Tramm advanced on the buffet, plate in hand. ‘Why did auntie cook all of this food?’ he recalls asking. ‘That’s crazy. There’s no way that we can eat this.’ His older cousin answered him with a question: ‘You see that plate in your hand?’ Tizya-Tramm looked down. It was an ordinary kind of plate, hospital green, plastic. ‘That’s from residential school,’ his cousin said. ‘That’s where your auntie grew up. And they used to starve her if she spoke her language. They wouldn’t feed her.'” Eva Holland – Up Here – December 2019
Why the World Needs ‘Anne with an E’ “Lucas Jade Zumann, who plays Gilbert Blythe, is well aware of how these prop fitters wrestling with branches are the crux of the show. ‘In this business, if someone is doing their job well, no one will notice,’ he tells me. ‘No one notices perfect sound mixing or an impeccable prop department, but they notice when it fails. Every person who is doing their job here is doing it so well that you can’t even tell they’re doing it when you watch the show. That is the real magic.'” James Mullinger – The Maritime Edit – November 2019
How a royal gift exposed sexual abuse at an elite Canadian school “In May 2008, Prince Andrew paid a visit to his Canadian alma mater: the prestigious Lakefield College School, just north of Peterborough, Ont. It was not the first homecoming for His Royal Highness. A teenage exchange student back in 1977, the Queen’s second son retains strong ties to his old campus and has reminisced often about how deeply he treasures those ‘life-changing’ six months. But that particular trip was especially sentimental. The Duke of York had a gift to present: a hand-carved baptismal font for the school chapel.” Michael Friscolanti – Maclean’s – October 2017
